Introduction:

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in higher education has had disturbing consequences on the lives and mental health of students. We intend to evaluate the levels of anxiety, depression, and stress of nursing students at the Polytechnic Institute of Santarem.

Method:

Exploratory, observational, descriptive, and correlational study. Students: 183 students, selected by convenience sampling. Measurement instrument: Anxiety, Depression and Stress Scale - EADS-21 validated for the Portuguese population, applied between November 19 and December 4, 2020. The collected data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows Software, version 27.0.

Conclusions:

The findings showed that most students had a normal level of depression (82.5%), anxiety (88.0%) and stress (94.0%). About 1.6% of students reported a moderate level of stress; 5.5% and 1.6% a moderate and severe level, respectively, of anxiety and 6% and 0.5% depression a moderate and severe level, in due order. Significant differences were found between means (Student's t test) in the comparison between gender (p < 0.001), with the highest scores, in the three dimensions, in the female gender that presented more stress (M = 7.59 + 4.728), depression (M = 5.83 + 4.503) and anxiety (M =3.87 + 3.869), that is, the affective states of the female gender were more negative.